Mozzarella!

I made homemade mozzarella last night! Yummy. It's easier than it sounds. It's one of those things where you think it's going to be a total disaster, and then at some moment you realize it's working, and voila, there's cheese. Food science is pretty cool stuff.

Here's the link to the 30 minute recipe:
http://www.cheesemaking.com/store/page/21.html

If Olive isn't a total wreck when I pick her up tonight, I want to go to the State Fair and see how the judging went for the jams...

I was giving the mosaic fountain some more thought, but I've decided I need to finish the hippo tang mosaic first, before I start anything new. See that? Commitment. Besides, that's a better one for winter so I can set it up in the yard in spring. I decided to go back to the glue option rather than the Thinset to attach the tiles and it is soooooo much easier. Less mess, easier to control. All the tiles are level and even. Yeah, I think glue is the way to go.

Creativity switch: ON

Wow... I am totally inspired by this mosaic artist that I found today... Her name is Sonia King and here's a link to some of her work:

http://www.mosaicworks.com/

Super cool. I love the use of materials other than glass. It gave me an idea to maybe try some small mosaics with semiprecious stone beads... Obviously, cost prohibitive. Ebay has so many lovely options. I'm also thinking of trying paua shell veneers perhaps. Tres expensive, but so beautiful. You'd only need a little bit a as an accent here or there. I was thinking of maybe using plates as bases for them. Hmmm.

I'm also kicking around some mosaic fountain ideas in my head. Yeah, I've got to dig out the sketchbook tonight.

Botanical Sculpture class

Gonna try to make some progress on the fish tonight... I went into the basement yesterday and saw a painting I had started a year and a half ago and never finished. I hadn't seen it in awhile, and I was surprised at how good it looked to me. Maybe worth finishing after all. It just reminded me of how important it is getting stuff done, not just started. But, before I dive back into that, I think I should work on the fish and get that going.

I did get my ceramic piece just about done Friday... I have to post pictures of it. It's a piece I made in my Botanical Sculpture class this summer at Clayworks. (AWESOME, for anyone who hasn't taken classes there) It basically is kind of shell shaped, like a nautilus, and has no distinct bottom on it. I had to make little stilts for it to sit upright on for the bisque firing. I decided I didn't want to risk glazing it and having the glaze run down onto the stilts and have to be broken off and ground down. So instead, I "cold finished" it by painting it black and using copper leaf on it. Then I distressed it with steel wool and glazed it so it has the look of burned metal. I liked the idea of metal, but I also didn't want to lose the organic feel of it by making it too shiny and fabricated looking. This way it looks like it's a natural patination. (I'll post some shots tomorrow from work)

My other small sculpture from that class needs to be hung up somewhere. I love it. It's based on the buds of Echinacea flowers. I really love this one because it's different for me; I don't usually do things with multiple parts like this, but I really love how it turned out. This is not the greatest shot of it, I'll post a better one of it once I get it up on a wall.

7 State Fair entries!

So, I dropped everything off at the Sate Fair yesterday. I couldn't believe how nervous I was! It was a bunch of little old ladies mostly. (Shocker) Of course, nowhere on the website or entry form does it say no labels on the jars, nor that you must provide the recipe for Bread and Butter pickles. Anyway, the woman was nice enough to let me take the labels off (which came off easily, thank God) and then clean the tops of the lids off with nail polish remover to get rid of the stickiness (which they pointed out would count against me). I managed to remember most of the recipe for the pickles, although they told me it didn't need to be exact. In the "Fruit Conserve: other " category, the did go, "Ooh, 'Mango Rhubarb!' " So I think it's unique. The judging is Wednesday morning, and then the place opens Friday and you can go in and see the results. I'm not sure how that works... if they open them to taste them, then put them on display for ten days unrefrigerated? I guess I'll figure it out.

I left there feeling proud of myself for actually doing it, but also feeling like I am way out of my league. However, it's just jam. I don't expect to win anything, I just wanted to enter so I could say I did. So who knows. I guess I'll find out Friday!

Beach Musings

I just had to have a picture of this... it was in a notebook we found at the rental house at the beach. Your guess is as good as mine.

Fantasy Farming

You know, every time my job starts really getting to me I start daydreaming about moving to Virginia somewhere and buying an old farm and starting a farm of my own. I want space where I can have chickens so I can have fresh eggs, and a big field for growing lots of veggies for canning, and a place to have an orchard of fruit trees. It seems to be the hip trend nowadays; You see it in magazines all the time; People in quaint little farmer's markets, selling baskets of speckled brown eggs and beautiful squashes and tomatoes. They give up their hectic jobs in the city to go live on the farm somewhere.

Ridiculous fantasy? Yes! Have I bought into it completely? YES!

Needless to say, they gloss over the backbreaking manual labor in the hot sun required for such an endeavor. The chicken shit, having to cleanout barns and deal with stinky diesel tractors & farm equipment. Insects, rabbits, deer, groundhogs, drought, disease. All the horsemen are represented. Well, maybe not War "officially" but perhaps the horseman of Marital Strife. And how many squash do you really have to sell to make a mortgage payment, anyway? Marc has been punching holes in my fantasy world left and right. Probably because he hates chickens.

Damn.

Melon Disappointment!

So, I finally picked on of my heirloom Tigger melons that I have been coddling all summer. Aren't they gorgeous?! They're softball sized, and a lovely orange with tan markings on them. They smell divine. But when I finally went to eat one today, I discovered they are nearly flavorless with a slight raw pumpkiny aftertaste. Talk about a letdown... I am hoping they all don't taste like this. Maybe there are some that are sweeter. I hate it when that happens!

Sheesh! I had no idea how many tomatoes it would take to make sauce for canning. I had two nearly full grocery bags full of tomatoes, and when all was said and done, it literally boiled down to two jars of sauce for canning. Crazy. I guess when you see pantry shelves lined with jars of tomatoes, they must have acres of plants growing. Oh well. I got the two jars done, plus seven jars of peach jam. It was a bit chaotic trying to do both things at the same time... I don't recommend it. I make my own ground spice mix for jam which has cardamom, cloves, nutmeg, allspice and cinnamon in it. I think I didn't grind it finely enough though, because there are chunky bits of clove and cardamom in it. That doesn't bother me, but it might not fly with State Fair judges. Oh well. I did get the labels on the jars and boy do they look spiffy.

102 fucking degrees in my office right now

Yes, It's actually 102 degrees. In my office. I just checked the thermometer. So, factor in 48% humidity, and it feels like its, well, really fucking hot. Unreal. This has to be against some sort of government regulation. I think I've lost 3 pounds today.

Anyway, on the note of sweltering heat, I have to go home and make jam and can tomatoes tonight. No better way to cool off than to spend a few hours in the kitchen over a vat of boiling water! Yay! Actually, I have to turn in my State Fair entries on Thursday, and I still haven't made the peach jam that I already signed myself up for. I did have Kate make me some nifty labels for the jars though... I'm hoping that will give me a bit of a competetive edge. We'll see.

As for the tomatoes, I had a pile of them when I came back from vacation, and then a friend of mine had a ton of them and gave me another huge bagful. I'm not going crazy with making some elaborate spaghetti sauce though. I think I'm just going to peel and seed them, chop them a little and add some basil to it. I can add garlic and onion and all that other stuff later when I go to cook it. Before we left for th ebeach I took the bunch of tomatoes I had and just cored them, blanched them to peel them, and threw them in a quart ziploc bag in the freezer. This worked really well too, but I will run out of freezer space if I keep that up.

I've had one tomato plant that since the beginning has looked different from the others; the leaves are wider and less lobed. Now it's finally ripening up and the tomatoes are this lovely soft pink color. It is definitely not one of the Rutgers tomatoes, so something got mixed up somewhere. It's really pretty, I wish I knew what kind it was. I think I'll save some of it's seeds for next year. Maybe I've discovered the next big thing in tomatoes.

I am hoping I can get back to my hippo tang soon, I haven't worked on it in a week and I miss it. Olive seems to be especially whiny in the evenings lately, which makes evenings tough.

I did manage to make some homemade yogurt last night, so I can have that for dinner tonight with fresh cucumbers I just picked. I used the organic whole milk I got at the Farmer's Market Sunday. Yummy!

The fish continues...

I'm off to NY for a couple of days to visit the family; I did make progress on the mosaic this week while at the Beach. I ended up buying new Thinset and starting over, which sucked, but I'll be better off int he end. I am debating weather it is better to adhere the tiles to the wood with Thinset or glue. I thought glue might be kinda cheating, kinda half-assed, which is why I thought I'd switch to the Thinset. Glue is primarily used for attaching tiles to mesh, which is then set in Thinset. But then you have to work in a mirror image, which can really be tricky. The Thinset is definitely harder to use; it's messy, and I am finding that it creates a less even finish... the tile surface is bumpier. I also don't like that you have to put a fair amount of it on, or the tiles won't stick, but then it squishes up between the tiles and you have to clean this out later or the grout won't have enough space to hold. And there's the drying time issue. It was rainy at the Beach, and the stuff was taking a long time to set up. I'll have to consult some message boards. Anyone else have any recommendations?

Also, my State Fair entries have to be in by August 24th! I am getting nervous... I still have to make a batch of peach jam. I'll have to do that as soon as I get back. That's the problem with filling out the entry form a month and a half early. I think I'm going to have Kate or Marc help me make a nice label for all the jars... aesthetics must count for something!

Thinset Set back

Argh. I should have known better than to use the old bag of Thinset that's been sitting in my basement forever. I spent 3 hours the other night setting tiles on the fish mosaic. This morning I went out and saw that the excess Thinset in the cup I had was still soft. Not a good sign. Sure enough, all the tiles started popping off a the slightest provocation. So, I decided to chalk it up as a loss and scrape them all off and start over. I hated to do it, but I'd rather fix it now or it will just make a huge mess later on. So anyway, I drove to Fenwick Island yesterday and bought a new bag, and last night I started piecing it back together. I didn't get it all back to where I was, but this morning, the tiles I did get on there are solid as rocks. So, that's good. It's so tempting (for me anyway) to be totally half assed, but I'm glad I made myself fix it. We're on vacation this week in Bethany Beach with Marc's family. It's nice to A) Not be at work, and B) to have time to work on my mosaic. Yay! I'll get some more in progress shots up soon...